It's 1898. Russia is in need of cruisers to strengthen its naval capability in the Pacific Ocean.
Of all the ships that were built, Bogatyr was the best and became a prototype
for a whole serious of formidable Russian ships.
Bogatyr was laid down on December 9, 1899.
This 1st rank cruiser was constructed in Germany,
as the Russian naval ministry found that the best project was offered by the German company, Vulcan.
All documents were constantly passed to Russia, where local shipyards were
laying down Bogatyr's sister ships: Vityaz, Ochakov, Kagul, and Oleg...
Cruiser Bogatyr was a three-funnel ship with two masts, and a well-developed forecastle and poop deck.
The cruiser's power plant was modified at the suggestion of Russian engineers.
As a result, Bogatyr could sail even faster than designed, developing a speed of 24 knots
with more than 20,000 horsepower.
The new cruisers were 440 ft long; their beam was over 53 ft;
the draft was about 23 ft; and the designed displacement was 6,410 tons.
The ship’s critical parts—her power plant and magazines—
were covered by an armored arched deck with slopes to the sides and ends.
The horizontal section of the deck was 1.4 inches thick,
and the slopes were 2.8 inches thick.
The guns were well-protected by armored turrets and casemates,
which gave Bogatyr an advantage over her sister ships and other cruisers.
On the main battery turrets, the armor was 3.5 to 4.9 inches thick;
on the gun casemates, it was 1.4 to 3.1 inches thick.
The conning tower was protected by 5.5-inch armor;
the gun shields and the roofs of turrets and the conning tower were 1-inch thick.
Bogatyr's primary armament consisted of twelve 6-inch Canet guns,
well reputed in the Russian navy.
Eight of them were placed in casemates and in mounts on the deck.
Four guns were installed in twin turrets on the ship's bow and stern,
which was Bogatyr's distinctive feature.
With this arrangement of artillery on board, the ship could focus fire very effectively:
no other Russian cruiser boasted a salvo of eight main battery guns.
The secondary battery consisted of twelve 3-inch Canet guns.
In addition, the cruiser was equipped with six small-caliber Hotchkiss guns.
As for torpedo armament, Bogatyr and her sister ships had
four 15-inch torpedo tubes.
In the November of 1902, two months after her commission,
cruiser Bogatyr sailed to Russia’s Far East.
Not long after that, the Russo-Japanese War broke out and, at first, she had an active role in it.
During the first three months of hostilities, Bogatyr left the harbor three times to hunt
for enemy transports.
Unfortunately, on her next cruise Bogatyr ran aground and spent the rest of the war in repairs.
After the Russo-Japanese War, the cruiser returned to the Baltic Sea and again,
like on her voyage to Russia’s Far East, she demonstrated excellent reliability:
the ship sailed the distance without delays or malfunctions.
Upon arrival she was included in the Special Baltic Division,
intended for training naval cadets.
Together with this division, Bogatyr undertook long cruises almost every year,
visiting the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea, and even the Barents Sea.
In 1908 in the Mediterranean Sea, the cruiser's crew helped save people
after a terrible earthquake in the Italian city of Messina.
Russian sailors were the first to arrive at the disaster scene
where they rescued more than 2,000 people and transported hundreds of injured to the hospitals
in Syracuse, Naples, and Palermo.
Their actions are a highlight for the Russian fleet:
three years after the earthquake, Italian sculptor Pietro Kufferle created a project for a monument,
which was erected in Messina a hundred years later.
Cruiser Bogatyr actively participated in World War I.
She laid mines in the Baltic Sea, engaged German cruisers, and hunted for enemy transports.
Bogatyr played a key role in the operation aimed at capturing secret documents
aboard German cruiser Magdeburg after she ran aground.
The seized papers were transferred to the Allies and allowed them to easily decipher German
radiograms until the end of the war, which had a significant impact on the course of hostilities.
In early 1916, a radical rearmament of the ship was carried out.
All 6-inch and 3-inch guns
were replaced with 16 new rapid-firing 5.1-inch guns made by Russia’s Obukhov Plant.
With the beginning of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Bogatyr sailed to Reval (now Tallinn),
and from there she arrived at Kronstadt after the tremendously difficult
Ice Cruise in February and March of 1918.
At the end of 1922, Bogatyr sailed her last cruise to Germany,
where she had been built 20 years before, to be scrapped.
However, protected cruiser Bogatyr was officially stricken from
the Soviet fleet registry in only 1925.